Epistle 3
by EtherBot
Summary: A comprehensive reimagining of Epistle 3 by Marc Laidlaw, taking place after the events of Episode 2.


Dearest Player,

This is the part where I like to imagine you saying, "Gordon Freeman! It's been ages! What on earth have you been up to?" if not for you being light years away and from another plane of reality and all. Well, if you care to hear excuses, I've got plenty. Most critically, I've been lost through time and floating in an extradimensional void for over 11 years. Given those circumstances, I think you'd agree it would've been difficult to contact you. Not impossible, mind you, just very very difficult, and requiring I do particular things I'd really rather not. Things so specifically unpleasant that even trying to write them out here so you can read it in disgust, and say something along the lines of: "Wow, that is unpleasant! If you'd contacted me then, I'd probably have to have heard of that as well, so in that sense, I'm glad you waited!" is too cruel of me to do. By the way, if that was what you were saying, great! I'm also glad I waited, at least in that sense.

It's been too long, though. You have a point. I wish I had known it would be over a decade, I would have corresponded sooner. Something, I'm sure, would have been better than that: an agonizing update-less void, with you, almost certainly, staring at the screen, waiting for my final legendary tale. I guess it's sort of legendary, isn't it? I've been in a lot of strange places, Player. We've been in a lot of strange places. In my defense, there isn't much you could call my previous predicament other than an agonizing update-less void, so in that sense, we were still in that situation together. It would have helped, sure, to have been able to talk about it while we were both wandering an empty nowhere-land waiting for each other's thoughtful response, but at least now that we can finally talk, we can laugh over it together?

But, that's not really what this is, is it? This is less the two of us reunited at last, as much as it's my final correspondence towards you. You likely cannot respond, and if you can, to whom will you be responding to? I like to think our potential far-off reunion, partners in crime together at least—finding ways to maneuver the environment together, coming up with plans, taking apart large-scale opposition hand in hand—like the good old days, would be exactly as I remember them. And yet, somehow, when I stop and try to be perfectly emotionally honest with myself, I know that can't possibly ever happen. I'm changed, Player. There's been so much space between us that if I we were to now catch up and try to initiate some kind of dialogue, I would struggle to be myself. I would want to me my past self, the rollicking theoretical physicist going on adventure after adventure in a never-ending ride into sunset after sunset, but that's over! That part of me is gone now. Now, here I am, staring off into the sand as waves lick the beach, and a humid sticky chill is pushed into my face by the sea. And off into the horizon, as I write this, is that final sunset, dripping down into the ocean far away.

Updates. My final legendary adventure, as I promised. Well, to set the stage, as you may recall from our previous exploits together, Eli Vance died. He was murdered. His death shook all of us. At first riding high from what seemed a penultimate and decisive victory, suddenly everything at once was called into question. The trauma of the event, the sheer senselessness of it, managed to take hold of our roots and tear it all away. "What on earth…" I heard somebody say. "What kind of game are we playing? We thought we could win?" I thought that it was responsibility that forced our hand whenever we fought, but it wasn't that at all. We weren't protecting value, we were never concerned with what was at stake. The stakes had never been higher, a pivotal resistance member dead and a transdimensional super weapon nearly in the hands of the Combine, but under the pressure, at first, we buckled. How on earth did we ever think there was even a chance? Yes, we managed amazing things, but it was always reactionary. One step away from finally taking the fight to them, and they took the fight to us first, in the most devastating way imaginable.

No. It wasn't responsibility that caused us to fight. As Eli's body was buried over, and all of us gathered to watch, I realized it was something else. Something more potent, more ingrained. It was a curious gnawing feeling that seemed to double exponentially with every passing minute. It was a strange evolutionary defect spilled into our primordial soup, that was slowly starting to simmer. Kleiner could sense it, but he had trouble finding the words as he stumbled over his eulogy. Magnusson was closer, but even he had trouble articulating that particular itching restlessness that grew out of the long forlorn faces cast in shadow huddled over the corpse of their once beloved friend.

Alyx Vance hit the nail on the head. We were compelled to fight not through responsibility, but through justice. It was the _principle_ of the thing—what kind of game did those power hungry bastards think they were playing? Could they possibly have thought they could slide in and take humanity over that easily? As if we wouldn't even put up a fight? Perhaps that's the final biological tick about humans that got us as far as we did. The killing of Eli Vance was perhaps the most straightforward message possible: We cannot be stopped, and next time it will be all of you. The Combine is simple, ruthless, and monstrously efficient. In their own despicable way, their process is almost beautiful. They're the simplest form of a parasite, and they've cut their corners so thin that at times their strategy seems almost impossible to comprehend. When some force is lesser than them, they assimilate it. When some force is greater than them? They wait until they're stronger than it, and assimilate it. A perfect never-ending cycle of conquest creating the greatest terror Earth had ever yet seen.

But somehow, among all the noise, we didn't get that message. We were, as a matter of fact, too busy being incensed over their absolute audacity. That's the difference between the Combine and humanity. The Combine knows how to take a hint. We see a force greater than us, and we think "How dare that force even think about being greater than us? Well, we'll show them a thing or two, won't we?"

Alyx's eulogy was hardly even a eulogy at all. She spoke in a clear, slow voice, and her point clear as day. We had precise coordinates, transmitted from Dr. Judith Mossman, which we had strong reason to believe lead to the lost research vessel Borealis. The information and sheer technology sunk into that ship would be perhaps the single most pivotal weapon if it ever got into the hands of the Combine. It was Eli's opinion that the ship itself, and all the research on it, should be destroyed. Kleiner and some others on the team disagreed. Finding and utilizing the research on the vessel could perhaps be the final crucial step in winning against the Combine. To have that knowledge could possibly have been the power needed to finally end the war.

Either way, it was a moot point until we found the vessel for ourselves. Therefore, immediately following the service for Dr. Vance, Alyx and I boarded a helicopter set for the Arctic. Another, larger support team, mainly militia, was to follow by separate transport.


End file.
